Title

Files

Subject

Indian tribes North of Mexico

Description

Lack of knowledge of the aborigines and of their languages led to many errors on the part of the early explorers and settlers. Soon after the organization of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879, the work of recording a tribal synonymy was formally assigned to Henry W. Henshaw. The 2,500 tribal names and synonyms appearing in this list were taken chiefly from James Mooney's manuscript; the linguistic classification was the result of the work that the Bureau had been conducting under Henshaw's supervision. The handbook contains a descriptive list of the stocks, confederacies, tribes, tribal divisions, and settlements north of Mexico, accompanied with the various names by which these have been known, together with biographies of Indians of note, sketches of their history, archeology, manners, arts, customs, and institutions, and the aboriginal words incorporated into the English language.